No more self healing...wtf devs???

[Booth]

lol i never even used that spell anyways i tried it before and it didnt work so i didnt use it

[Amun]

Stating self healing was a bug isn't much of a reason to take it away. Moving faster diagonally was / is also considered a bug in games like this. Except some developers realised the players wanted it and it made movement more strategic so they left it. Savvy?

#inma let mages get into certain places on the map they otherwise could not. The same goes for archers. Now for the two classes to enjoy all of the world they need to tank up.

I know taking this away was also an attempt to balance things better which I honestly do respect the effort but I think it was a step in the wrong direction. There are so many other things that could have been better options.

And yes people do get frustrated when stuff like this happens. After a game has been around for sometime and has a solid reputation there are certain elements and consistencies gamers expect. If the dev's are going to make drastic controversial changes in game-play I think some type of warning before downloading is warranted. Maybe in big red font ;p Not to mention not knowing if our characters most of us worked really hard on is going to exist from one day to the next. (a bit off topic).

[Booth]

Your welcome Dallas, i said it just for you. (:

[Jaxad0127]

Remember, the current magic is just level 2 out of 5. If level 2 is powerful enough to go toe to toe with level 99 warriors and arches, the remaining levels will be far too powerful. We'll add more powerful healing spells in the next levels. We'll add more powerful attack spells to, but at the moment, what we have is far too powerful to work in the long run.

Also remember, this game is pre-alpha. That means we'll be adjusting things constantly. Nothing should be considered permanent or final. We should've fixed that spell a long time ago, but we didn't have time.

[fate]

Amun,

Stating self healing was a bug isn't much of a reason to take it away.

I fully agree. But stating that it was overpowered is.

#inma let mages get into certain places on the map they otherwise could not. The same goes for archers. Now for the two classes to enjoy all of the world they need to tank up.

Can you be specific about which places those are, please? The only place I can think of would be co-op dungeons like the hatmaker's dungon/snake pit. As indicated by the attribute `co-op', those shouldn't be attempted alone; how big were the groups that you have tried those with and failed?

I know taking this away was also an attempt to balance things better

No. This was not an attempt to balance. This change was to reduce the exploitability of this spell. There are other issues with healing magic that we'd like to fix, but, as I said, we are investigating what's going on. As I'm sure we all remember from science classes, changing the experimental setup while you are running an experiment renders your experimental results useless.

which I honestly do respect the effort but I think it was a step in the wrong direction.
There are so many other things that could have been better options.

(Emphasis mine.) Neither you nor I know for sure.

Now, we could continue firing shots in the dark. Instead, what we decided to do was to fix some of the most egregious spec violations and bugs, and then stop to examine the state of matters before we try to balance.

And yes people do get frustrated when stuff like this happens. After a game has been around for sometime and has a solid reputation there are certain elements and consistencies gamers expect.

This is indeed a serious problem. Most people are overly attached to stability, and for developers in pre-alpha projects this is a never-ending source of frustration.

If the dev's are going to make drastic controversial changes in game-play I think some type of warning before downloading is warranted.

That's actually a good idea. Thanks for the suggestion!
Please understand that for us as developers tagging a game as 0.x or even 0.0.x implicitly suggests that `everything may change,' but I am beginning to understand where the confusion comes from: not everyone has the same cultural background with respect to the interpretation of version numbers.

-- fate

[Ceros]

Bob Slydell: Milton Waddams.
Dom Portwood: Who's he?
Bob Porter: You know, squirrely looking guy, mumbles a lot.
Dom Portwood: Oh, yeah.
Bob Slydell: Yeah, we can't actually find a record of him being a current employee here.
Bob Porter: I looked into it more deeply and I found that apparently what happened is that he was laid off five years ago and no one ever told him about it; but through some kind of glitch in the payroll department, he still gets a paycheck.
Bob Slydell: So we just went ahead and fixed the glitch.
Bill Lumbergh: Great.
Dom Portwood: So, uh, Milton has been let go?
Bob Slydell: Well, just a second there, professor. We, uh, we fixed the *glitch*. So he won't be receiving a paycheck anymore, so it'll just work itself out naturally.
Bob Porter: We always like to avoid confrontation, whenever possible. Problem is solved from your end.

Seriously, I think there was some drastic over compensation to reports of mages being overpowered. Whether or not it was intended to work like it has been, I don't think I have ever seen one person complain about mages being able to insta-heal.

Besides that, gimping lightning and ore prices at 10k each is seriously going to Duck mages in the ass even more. I think in this case, the free market was working to help game balance out.

[Freeyorp101]

...gimping lightning...

Lightning has not been modified.


---Freeyorp

[Ceros]

...gimping lightning...

Lightning has not been modified.


---Freeyorp

Oh, welp then. (I came here from the other thread which mentioned lightning being gimped. Apologies.) Still, I don't think self healing was a problem or overly abused. I see mages die plenty quick enough when skulls lose aggro ane whatnot. You know, seeing as they can't really rock the armor and all that happy Chocolate Cupcake.

[fate]

Ceros,

Seriously, I think there was some drastic over compensation to reports of mages being overpowered.

No. There was a bugfix and some anger over the bugfix, followed by some jumping to conclusions and misinformation being spread. We have not yet had a chance to react the reports of mages being too powerful that you are referring to, simply because we don't have enough information to make any informed decision yet, but we decided to fix some of the open bugs before starting to collect detailed information.

Please be aware of the fact that the current set of spell was designed for players of experience levels 10-50, very roughly, so it's not surprising that the `design spec behaviour' of these spells is insufficient for players of higher levels. We could have made these spells for level 80+ players first and then cut them down to be suitable for earlier players when more spells became available, of course. But I don't think anyone would want have wanted to deal with the fallout of that.

(Also note that self-healing is still possible, but not `practically for free', as it used to be.)

-- fate

[Fluffers]

That 'self healing' heals by a crap amount over time. When you're facing three snakes with low vit, getting ten HP every five seconds would mean nothing. All it would be is a waste of lifestones.

[Kill3rZ]

@jaxad:
We are not looking for definitive solutions right now. Unless you can make all magic levels available today, we need pre-alpha solutions to make the game playable for everybody at this moment regardless of level. It's annoying when you take something away and give nothing in return. If you would have fixed this bug *and* released magic lvl 3 at the same time, a lot less people would have complained and you would have had the opportunity to answer "we already made magic stronger, now we needed something to balance that and self-healing #inma was a bug in the first place." And you would have been right.

We appreciate your efforts of balancing the game, we understand your frustrations and we'll try to be understanding, but keep in mind that we'd like to play the game today too, not just in a few years when the game will be in a different stage. The fact that "some day" I'll be able to instantly heal myself at a higher level of magic offers me no comfort today when, as a mage, some parts of the map became "forbidden" for me.

[fate]

Kill3rZ,

I was the one who fixed this bug, not Jaxad, so please don't blame him if you are dissatisfied.

Please allow me to summarise the gist of this thread:

(a) Some players are unhappy about a bugfix.
(b) The developers recognise this unhappiness.
(c) Data gathering is in progress, so the game mechanics can't be changed right now nor in the next couple of days.
(d) The next round of balancing will happen as soon as possible after data collection is complete. As usual, anything might change.
(e) Rebalancing has to target both immediate needs and the future needs.

Two more points on top of what has already been said:
(f) We try not to register complaints as relevant data, since complaints are subjective and anecdotal. Complaints serve as motivation, though.
(g) Creative suggestions are always welcome.

-- fate

[Kill3rZ]

I wasn't pointing any fingers or *blaming* anyone.

Jaxad answered a few complaints about things that happened *now* with solutions that will come *some day in the future when it will be all nice*. As much as I appreciate his wide long-term views, I try to make him understand that short term solutions are also important, even if some of them don't fit in the "big plan" and will be removed some time in the future. I only used the current whining session as an example.

[Macias_P]

"We try not to register complaints as relevant data, since complaints are subjective and anecdotal. Complaints serve as motivation, though."

Well, you can call whatever you like irrelevant. But complaints are not irrelevant because:

a) They are not always subjective.
b) They are not always anecdotal.

People have made very good points explaining why inma was all right for the moment. Here at the forum an in the game. You can use the irrelevant subjective and anecdotal bull* if you want, bat that is just a false premise.

The other points about the bugfix, happiness and creative suggestions are, as you like to say, irrelevant. The thing is that with just lev2 magic on the game, a potent healing spell that gives exp to healers is a need. That is not anecdotal.

So please, restore inma as it was. It's a good creative suggestion based on non anecdotal evidence harvested by hours of playing. Or you can continue playing straw man as you have been doing in this thread.

You can "correct" the bug when lev3 healing spells are available. Meanwhile you've just finished with one of the ways healers can level up while playing with their fellow warriors.

[Kill3rZ]

No, dude, #inma still brings xp, but you just can't heal yourself with it any more. That was usually the difference between life and death for a mage. That's the real problem. Read carefully.